Tuesday, December 13, 2011

NEVER NEVER TOWN

Ruston Town Council meeting November 7, 2011 7pm
Pretty routine:
Res 495 adopted Official Newspaper. Amid all the clatter I did not get the name of.
Ord 1344 Adopting Town of Ruston Annual Budget for fiscal year 2012 (first reading)
MAYORS TIME/COUNCIL TIME
This is where it got exciting!
Don't attend many council meetings but showed up on Nov. 7.
Cabal gone?
If you would of witnessed the arm waving and calls to shut it down (Point Ruston) you would soon realize they are not gone and still intend to inflict maximum damage and slow down tactics. Even threatening arrests and to ram the gate. The arch typical NIMBY Town.
Interesting the people on Stack Hill were not the ones complaining but one individual who lives about six blocks away and another three blocks away both on the Council.
The lights and noise are 90 feet down from the edge of Stack Hill and well away from the main part of Ruston.
This night work is rainy, cold and dangerous but hours are controlled and imposed by the EPA from midnite to 5am. This is still an EPA controlled site and Ruston has little say although you wouldn't know it by the caterwauling council.
And a funny point the rip rap restoration was all being done on the Tacoma side of the Point Ruston site.
For a fun night of entertainment and people making fools of themselves attend a Ruston town council meeting. A laugh a minute.
2011 budget deficit $306,000 Police budget $348,000 to $384,000 with support items. Makes sense to them I guess. For 100 years Ruston got along with one Town Marshall, yes ONE.
What is amazing is that half the meeting is counting on Point Ruston to save the town the other half how to close Point Ruston down.
Make sense to you?
Still to come on the budget deficit:
five law firms
mega lawsuits
jail costs - skyrocketing!
Total budget deficit they are not saying. But strategized delays forced Point Ruston to start building in Tacoma forestalling most taxes that will eventually be collected in Ruston.
Point Ruston - The Destination
A day late and a dollar short.
Get the picture they are dead broke and haven't got the message.
Time to bite the bullet and begin serious negotiations with the City of Tacoma and a bailout/take over. Recent improvements sewers/street light make a merger more promising possibility.

Previous council had the right idea but were not upfront with the Town's people conducting secret negotiations and back room deals. Remember we are bringing 12-15 people along? How could they have been so right and acted so wrong at the same time?
This was a grand old Town but in the last six years has taken a serious desultory wrong turn.
I never thought I would be on this side but the longer it remains the more serious damage it can cause meaning the Town of Ruston.
More on Ruston Home blog: Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Ruston School For Sale Again?
The proverbial white elephant soon to be mothballed. Remember they sold the lower parking lot for three or four million dollars to keep the Town afloat this long. But the aged school building may be beyond redemption. Wow a mega apartment site? That would rattle a lot of cages.
It can't go on much longer. Under paid and over worked Town employees pushed to the breaking point? Serious health disability problems waning.
Give up the ghost. There are no more ASARCO freebies. Welcome to the Ruston district of Tacoma! Let's get it on, full steam ahead, with Point Ruston the jewel on Commencement Bay.

Town of Ruston officials:
Mayor, Bruce Hopkins
Council, Bradley Huson, Jim Hedrick, Deborah Kristovich, Lyle Hardin, Jane Hunt
Attorney, Carol Morris
Planner, Rob White
Clerk/Treasurer, Myriah Mesa

A tad late but better late than never.
-30-

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish we would go back to one cop in Town. Right, lets see how long that would last. Comon Jim get back into 2012 mind frame. So how much money do we have left in the 4.5 million the Town got several years ago? The Town had borrowed money ever since ASARCO was active, and guess what, they are still around. Don't give up Ruston.

Anonymous said...

This town began with the name "Smelter" and it should be honored by being called the "Smelter" district.
*In 1890 W.R. Rust established Tacoma Smelting & Refining Company and a company town for his employees, naming the place "Smelter".* (*wikipedia)